In this crossover episode of the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast and VetFolio Voice, Dr. Andy Roark, Stephanie Goss and Dr. Cassandra Fleming dive into conflict management in veterinary practices. They discuss how to reframe conflict as an opportunity for growth rather than something to avoid. Stephanie and Andy break down the importance of building conflict-resilient teams—teams that can disagree, talk through issues, and move forward without tension lingering. They explore practical tools for managing conflict effectively, including communication techniques, creating a culture of psychological safety, and empowering team members to handle conflict themselves rather than relying on leaders to mediate every dispute. They also introduce the Conflict Management Certificate, a resource designed to equip veterinary teams with skills to navigate tough conversations constructively. Whether you’re a practice leader, manager, or team member, this episode offers valuable insights into transforming workplace conflict into a tool for stronger teamwork and better patient care.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Conflict Management Certificate
Leadership Essentials Certificate
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Cassandra Fleming obtained her Master’s Degree in Animal Sciences from the University of Florida in 2010 followed by her DVM, also from the University of Florida, in 2014. She graduated with certificates in both Food Animal Medicine and Veterinary Business.
She currently practices as a small animal general practitioner in North Central Florida, where her favorite cases to manage include dentistry and geriatric medicine, specifically pain management in dogs with arthritis.
You may also recognize her as Dr. Cassi of VetFolio, VetFolio’s staff veterinarian, which has afforded her amazing opportunities to learn from some of the industry’s best.
When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time with her husband Josh and their two young daughters. She also enjoys spending time with her dog, Wrigley, and almost any outdoor activity!,Stephanie is a former practice manager who lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. With over 20 years of experience both on the floor and in the office, Stephanie is passionate about staff education, team culture, management and training. Stephanie loves to geek out about technology, especially Practice Management Software. She has experience as a practice manager in both private and corporate practices, ranging in size from one to seven doctors. She has experience as a consultant and trainer with AVImark software, paperlite/paperless transitions, practice management and staff training. Stephanie is currently the [Insert made up title here] for Uncharted Veterinary Conference.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a fun for you today. Today is a crossover episode. This is actually an episode of VetFolio Voice and , they invited me and my friend Stephanie Goss, who’s also the co-host of the podcast to come and talk to them about conflict and conflict management in vet practices, and I did not wanna go and talk about conflict management in a way that would be sort of a downer or boring. And so we ended up talking about building vet cultures that see conflict as an opportunity for growth. How do we make it so that people see conflict as not being bad?
And we talk a lot about that. I, it blew my mind, I tell the story in this podcast. You know, we asked a room of 800 people, raise your hand if you see conflict as bad and almost everyone raised their hand. It’s like, it’s not bad, it’s just, it’s a required way to move forward. Everybody wants different things.
And so conflict is just inherent in, in where we are and who we are and how we do things in the world. And so anyway, , we just start to talk about that and how we can frame up conflict and look about, look at it and think about it differently. And we talk about how you can build teams that are conflict resilient, meaning they have conflict and then they shake it off.
And it’s not a big deal. Like we, we did it. We had some people who disagreed. We discussed that disagreement, and then we all nodded our heads and we went on and it was not a big deal. And I think a lot of people would really love to have that in their practice. And so that’s what we talk about in this episode.
Guys, I hope that you’ll enjoy it. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark, Stephanie Goss. Thank you so much for joining me in studio. We’re going to talk about conflict management.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah.
Stephanie Goss: Thanks for having us guys.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Yes. We’re so happy to have you. And I understand that you gave a talk yesterday on building a conflict resilient team, which I feel like that wording is very intentional, like not conflict resistant, conflict resilient.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes, that was, well, that was that’s where it came from Stephanie.
You know, there’s really two ways to look at handling conflict in a practice. And so there’s the conflict management of like, what do you actually say, or how do you set this up? And then there’s building a culture where conflict is okay, and we can have some conflict, and it doesn’t send us spiraling down for the rest of the day.
It’s like, how do you build a team that can actually bounce back from disagreeing? I think that was sort of Stephanie’s idea in putting that talk together, and it’s just something she’s really great at is, is seeing that culture and leading, and leaning into the human aspect of, what does it mean, like, we’re all here together, and we’re all people doing our best and we all have different stressors and so how do we, you know, how do we support people so that they can do this?
I just thought it was an interesting take I thought when she came with the idea for our presentation and then I was like, that’s incredible and so
Stephanie Goss: I think for most of us as leaders we think about we don’t want to deal with other people’s conflict like we get tired of the team feeling frustrated with each other and having to deal with it and what for me as a leader was really a turning point in my career was recognizing that I actually want an environment where the team feels like they can disagree with one another and that they can say, I don’t think we should do it that way.
Or, Oh, I believe something different or even just like doctor to technician. I want the ability to save Andy’s bacon and say are you sure you want to send that antibiotic home? Like we should do this instead. Teams tend to think about it in a very, as conflict as a word just seems big and scary and negative.
And so, when we were talking about it in, in doing the work on the conflict management certificate, I said, let’s take it one step further and talk about conflict as a good thing and a tool for building a better team.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I want to push you a little bit further here, too. You know, we say we, we want to be able to have this, I’m saying you need to be able to have this conflict.
And so one of the things that blew my mind yesterday, so we were lecturing, the room was full, it was, it was one of the most full rooms we had. It was a huge room. And I asked the question, I thought this was a softball question, and I was gonna get really immediately caught asking this question that was clearly set up.
But I asked the whole audience, I said, raise your hand if you think conflict is bad. And what do you, I’d say the majority, a good majority, raised their hand.
Stephanie Goss: Hands, like straight up. Everybody thinks about it negatively.
Dr. Andy Roark: I was like, surely you recognize this is a trap. Like, I just like, nope. They threw their hands up and I’m like, Well, okay, right there, like a light bulb moment for me was like, we’re already getting this wrong from the beginning.
Like, if you think it’s bad, honestly, I think we probably did great good. If people just heard the headspace yesterday of look. What do we do for a living? We deal with medicine where there are people who want different things. You’ve got people who are focused on the outcome, the clients.
They have to pay for this. We’re trying to get them more. They’re trying to reduce costs. Maybe they’re, maybe they don’t trust us coming in the door. We’ve got, we have doctors that want to get home to their patients. newborn child. We have we have technicians that want to, make sure the medical records are well documented and things like that.
There’s people who want to, they want to get off and have their break. There’s other people who want to get done and they don’t want to lose their help. Like that, none of that’s bad. That’s what it means to get through the day. And so, it’s not about wanting to have conflict. You have got to be able to disagree.
There’s no scenario where the front desk that does not know what’s going on in the back doesn’t want things from the technicians. And, there has to be a way where I can say, Guys, I know this is what we’ve done in the past. think we should maybe make a change or this isn’t working if you can’t say this isn’t working because to me that’s that is conflict.
Stephanie Goss: Right
Dr. Andy Roark: If you can’t say this isn’t working.
What are we doing here? And so anyway, I think the biggest immediate thing is we have got a conflict resilient team is we have got to change people’s ideas around this is bad and go this is bad this is medicine. This is what it means to be on a team. And let’s stop, let’s stop thinking of this as a gross or bad thing.
And anyway, that blew my mind right off the bat as far as, Oh, this is where we are. Oh no. Yeah.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Well, and I, you know, I think we’ve, we probably all worked with someone at some point in time who has Maybe intentionally surrounded themselves with yes men and yes people who are going To agree with everything whether it’s the right thing or not and those aren’t healthy environments
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh sure,
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: and they’re not progressive and things don’t happen things don’t improve
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s like I mean I’ve just as I’ve gotten older I’ve just come to really believe that most of life happens on a spectrum It really does. And then there’s the culture where no one disagrees with anyone. That’s bad. That’s really bad. And then there’s the conflict riddled culture where everybody’s just contrary for the state. Toxic. Toxic.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: And everybody’s fighting all the time.
Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly right. And they’re just, it’s my way and I’m going to disagree just because I want to disagree. And that’s completely unproductive and frustrating, too. Life always, it happens in the middle. And I really do think that there’s that balance that we have to strike and achieve where, and I’m not trying to celebrate conflict.
And I do think one of the problems when we see conflict in practice, and this is maybe just an Andy thing, I think that we live in a society that really celebrates conflict. We live in a society where the media is all about trying to get our attention and keep our attention. And, we know, That conflict attracts attention.
We know it does, and that’s why you see it on social media. That’s why reality TV is the way that it is. You know, I don’t like conflict. And I’m pretty good at diffusing it. You will never see me on a reality TV show. Like, they would boot me off in a heartbeat. Like, get rid of that guy. He’s so boring. It’s true.
Stephanie Goss: I’m like, oh, wait. There’s a new idea for NAVC let’s have it.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: There we go. Yeah, let’s have a reality show. A well adjusted reality show.
Dr. Andy Roark: A well adjusted reality show where I’m like, hey, I see, it feels like you’re upset. Tell me, tell me, tell me how you feel. Like, where is this coming from? And so I feel like there’s that there’s a celebration of conflict all around us and you can’t tell me that I’m going to look at Instagram and I’m going to see people shouting each other or, people owning each other in reality TV and over time continually consume that.
And it’s not going to seep into me, at least normalize that behavior for me. I think that’s why we see pet owners and just anyone in customer service would say since the pandemic. Shouting and yelling has become so much more normalized and I think that’s toxic to sort of who we are as people but I do think it’s become more normalized. I think the flip side of that, and that’s what makes conflict management so hard is, really good conflict management skills, they’re invisible. Like the people who are really good at conflict management, you don’t know that. Like you don’t see it. They just don’t tend to have, like blow ups just don’t tend to happen because they recognize the signs. They ask the questions early on that gets people to say well this is what I, how I perceive that and you go, oh well then we can make these changes and so the problem, the overall systemic problem in my mind is we see bad behavior, we see bad conflict management and it just, we see it all the time and it becomes normalized and good conflict management is invisible.
Imagine that we danced in practice, right? Imagine that people would dance in practice, okay? Now.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: I love it. Can we practice?
Stephanie Goss: I can’t wait to see where this is going.
Dr. Andy Roark: Like this, there was zero, there was zero chance this metaphor is gonna break down. Like zero chance. This is perfect.
Alright, imagine that we dance, right? Okay, cool. And the only people you could see were bad dancers. And the worse dancer they were, the more visible they were. Like, the more, like, you got to see it. But the people who were really great were completely invisible. Those were the only people you didn’t see.
Do you think you would become a better dancer over time? There’s no way.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: I was gonna say, I think that ship sailed for me a long time
Dr. Andy Roark: If all you’re seeing is, is bad dancing, and like, like you’re, like, there’s, you don’t even know what good dancing looks like because you don’t see it. That’s conflict management, and no one tells us about conflict management.
We don’t get taught in schools. Here’s the sad thing, too. Most of us, where do we get our conflict management skills? We got them from our parents. We got them from our parents. Yeah, as children. And, if your parents had good, healthy conflict management skills, you probably got them. If your parents argued behind closed door and you weren’t there, you got nothing.
Right. they had bad conflict management skills, because they got bad conflict management skills from their parents, then you got bad conflict management skills. And again we all have the ability to grow and develop, but I’m just talking about the default starting point for most of us, what was demonstrated for us, and a lot of us just
we didn’t see healthy conflict. It’s not something we came up with and so this whole idea is new and if you just weren’t, if you haven’t been shown these tools and they’re subtle how do you ever come to go, oh, this is a good approach early on before things get to a shouting match.
Stephanie Goss: Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: Let’s try this communication tactic or let’s just step back here. It’s really easy. And it’s funny when people are really great at conflict management in the practice you’ve got a really great conflict management practice. They don’t walk around and go, look at us, we’re great at conflict management.
They just go on with their lives because they’re not. We don’t stop and think about, like, the absence of a toxic behavior, like, no, this is just, we’re, we just go on.
Stephanie Goss: And they’re generally the really happy practices because the conflict is encouraged and it doesn’t come out as we’re going to have an argument in the middle of the treatment room, right?
So when we asked that question yesterday, that was the responses. When people think about conflict, do they think about the shouting matches or do they think about the hospitals? You know, I’ve been in those hospitals where people are throwing surgical instruments or there’s, shouting matches and people are frustrated or it’s silent because there’s the tension of the team is not getting along or there’s problems here.
And so for me, it was like, yes, that is a type of conflict. And as a, as an educator and as someone who came from outside veterinary medicine from the education field, recognizing what Andy said is really important that as humans. Our education kind of stops at about age six or seven when it comes to human communication skills and for most of us, we’re not taught that and so as much as we might not want it to be our job as veterinary leaders, a huge part of our job is to give our teams the tools to be a healthy and happy practice and so how can we take that script and flip it on its head and look at to Andy’s point, making the conflict invisible, not because it’s not happening, but because the team is resilient that they can recognize it and say, Hey, I disagree with you. You disagree with me. We care about our job here, we care about our team, we care about our patients.
How can we put those values at the center and work through this to get to a place that is mutually beneficial for all of us?
Dr. Andy Roark: I mean, Montessori school is like, that’s like the pinnacle, like that’s the apex that most of us get to is Montessori school.
Stephanie Goss: And for a lot of us, it still stops though in childhood.
And so we don’t get that of those,
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Everything I need to learn in life, I learn on Sesame Street or I learn in kindergarten.
Stephanie Goss: Exactly.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: And two things kind of stuck out to me listening. to you up to this point. Andy, you started down that road by saying this might just be an Andy thing.
No, there’s people’s entire jobs it is to put conflict in front of our faces. So no, that’s not an Andy thing. Absolutely. Conflict is celebrated and the way it seems to me when you say good conflict management skills are invisible. I think a piece of that is taking away the fear of conflict is people who are good at conflict management,
it’s not a fear stimulus. It’s not. Oh gosh, like here we go. I mean, maybe there’s a little bit of like trepidation there, but I’m just from being human, but it’s okay. It’s going to be okay at the end of the day.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh yeah. I completely agree. So let me give you an example of this. Like, like one of the subtle skills and we talk about this in the certificate course just basic stuff like this is as soon as you start to, to hear tension, right?
You like, there’s some subtle signs that. Hey, this person is starting to feel frustrated. The simple question of like, tell me more. Those are the types of tools that get people to say you’re going to do this. And you say why do you think that I would do that?
You know me, you know what I’m trying to do. Why do you think that I would do that? again, it goes back to just those simple questions. But that’s why I say it’s invisible. As soon as the person starts to get frustrated, I say tell me more.
And then they’re explaining to me where their frustration is coming from. And then we’re just sorting it out. And my hackles never get up and my shoulders never bunch up around my ears. And it’s just done. I want to jump back real quick to something you said. It was actually really interesting.
I think a lot of people, all the examples that you gave around what conflict looks like in the practice, I think those are mostly extreme versions. Like when you walk in and no one’s talking to each other, that’s extreme. If people are throwing things, that’s not okay. That is too far, that is too far.
Stephanie Goss: It is not, and it happens more than I, I wish that it did in veterinary medicine.
Dr. Andy Roark: But here’s the other thing. There are other dysfunctions, I believe. that are based on conflict avoidance, right? We know we’re not good at managing conflict, so we just avoid conflict. And then you have other wildly different problems in the practice.
And so I’m curious if you think of the practices that are stagnant. Practices that are like, you know, nothing here ever changes. I have seen so many of those practices that are actually conflict avoidant. Meaning, nothing changes because we don’t want to talk about anything. And if we do, then there’s an immediate sort of blow up or shut down.
And so we don’t evolve because that whole pathway is closed down because we’re afraid of conflict or conflict immediately goes bad. So we all know that this person is going to, medical director or the managers are going to raise their voice. And so we just don’t ask. And so we’re not having conflict but we’re suffering from conflict.
Stephanie Goss: I think it goes back to what you said at the beginning, Cassie, like there, I think there are a lot of hospitals where it is still very much a the veterinarian is at the top of the food chain and it trickles down. And so to Andy’s point, the is avoiding the conflict by just nothing’s going to change.
So I’m just going to put my head down and do the work because I care about the patients. I might even like the team that I’m working with. There’s not the yelling and that but the tension is there nonetheless every day for people and I think it’s to Andy’s point. It’s the avoidance of conflict and not feeling like you have the skills to be able to navigate that.
And so for me as a leader, a big shift in my journey was when I as a team member learned and was given a tool belt and learned a skill set to be able to navigate communication in general, but conflict and realized how much different it is. Life could be. And so for me, it was about a lot of my journey has been about how do I teach my teams to communicate with each other so that not only the conflicts can be navigated when it does happen, because it will work.
We’re humans were imperfect and we’re messy and it will get that way in the clinic, especially, we talks about you. We have this kind of perfect boilerplate for conflict because we take human beings who are messy. We take veterinary medicine, which is a high stakes, high pressure environment.
We have patients lives at stake every day and everyone is passionate about what we do. We put all of those things together and it’s like this perfect pressure cooker sometimes for conflict to just happen. And if we don’t have the skills to work through it, we get stuck in that place. And over time, it leads to those more extreme examples as a result. So I’ve been super excited to start to talk about this more in our field, in our industry, because think we did a really good job for a while of starting to shine the spotlight on those truly toxic behaviors and change the script and the narrative as a community in Vet Med that Hey, this shouldn’t happen.
We shouldn’t have those extreme examples. And I still think that there’s a lot more work that we can do in the middle ground to equip people and give them the tools to talk to each other instead of having to feel like they have to come to me. That was one of the questions I asked out of curiosity yesterday.
I said, raise your hand if everybody comes to you as the leader, whether you’re the manager, a practice owner, whatever your leadership role. Raise your hand if they come to you because they are having conflict with someone else. And the amount of hands that went up was overwhelming. And I was like, this makes me so sad because that’s a horrible life.
I’ve lived it. It’s a horrible life to live. Who wants to feel like they have to solve everybody else’s problems all day long.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, it’s you were the person. One of the things I just admire about you is your interpersonal skills are so good. you’re so good at building relationships.
You know what I mean? And working with people one on one. The idea of the team is like, look, we can’t have conflict between each other. let’s go talk to her. And then she will use her interpersonal skills to with each individual person. And that’s how our practice will go forward.
That’s a brutal weight to put on your shoulders or people like you. You know what I mean? Yeah. And but we see that all the time. And there’s so many people who are
Stephanie Goss: My boss, my lead, my, you know, my manager. Yeah. My manager is the one who solves skills for all of us. He solves the problems. Yeah. know, I think.
Dr. Andy Roark: I think the the people who are most excited about the certificate, the Conflict Management Certificate that we made, that I have heard from, are people who fall in the category of exactly what you’re talking about. They are the person who other people come to and say, this person said something mean to me and I need you to go talk to them.
Or this person’s being a jerk and not doing, well you go talk to them. And so there’s this thing called the Karpman Drama Triangle. It’s called the Karpman Drama Triangle or the Hero Villain Victim triangle, right? I have such a picture in, okay, go. Yeah. Have a picture. So imagine this, right? So whenever you have conflict, right in, in practice, in the world, you ever have common, there’s three roles that are being played.
Okay? So there is the villain. The villain is the person who is causing the problem. That’s the person we’re upset about, right? Mm-hmm . There’s the victim, and the victim is the person that is being negatively impacted by the villain, right? And then there’s the hero. And the hero is the person who comes in and defends the victim and vanquishes the villain, saves the day.
And so the people who reach out to me are the heroes. They’ve got a victim and they’ve got a villain and they are continually being called to be the hero. What we try to do with our certificate is make it so that in practices the victim can be their own hero. And now you’re not getting pulled in. And it’s just, it’s so, so common because we all want to be a hero.
We like helping people. We like jumping in and saving the day. It’s wildly unproductive. If you’re the practice manager, if you’re the medical director, if you’re the practice owner, you have a million things to do with your time. Jumping in and being the hero to deal with this one off interpersonal conflict.
Over and over and over again. It sucks up a ton of your time, a bunch of your emotional energy. And then, you know what’s going to happen next time there’s a problem? They’re going to come get the hero again. It’s like, God, it would be exhausting to be Batman.
Stephanie Goss: You’ve trained them. Now you’ve trained them.
Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly right. It’s like they’re going to flip the bat signal on again and again. Because like, why do we even have police? Just flip this thing on over and over again. and that’s you. It’s cool to be Batman the first night, but then by the end of the week, you’re like, this is, this is a bit tough, but people live their careers that way.
And so anyway, we, the feedback we got was from people who were continually being the hero who said, Oh, thank you so much. now I can say, great. This is going on. I understand I have got a resource for you and let’s, work through this together and then you can go back and you can start to deal with this yourself.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Yeah going back to thinking of, veterinarians. I remember when I was coming through undergrad and they recommended I take a business. I get a business minor. I failed miserably. But they said they’re like, you know, you’re gonna be trained to practice medicine, not to own a business.
It seems like a similar concept here of like, you’re trained to practice medicine, not to lead this team and take on this role and handle these types of conflicts. And so initially when we started in this conversation, my head was like, okay, as you know, veterinarian who’s in a leadership role and developing, being better able to help.
Manage conflict throughout the team which it sounds like is important, but it sounds like that’s what puts us in that constant hero role. And so really what’s more important is sharing that tool belt and making everybody able to be their own hero and solve their own problems where it doesn’t continue to fall to one person.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, absolutely. One of the biggest problems with training people in vet medicine is everybody is so busy and it seems like it’s harder than ever to even do a lunch and learn these days. We’re doing staggered lunches. We do staggered lunches so that people, everybody gets a break and we don’t have to get the practice down and we can serve the pets coming in.
And I get it. It’s just, it seems like The opportunities to get everybody together and to learn it has just sort of gone down and so doing something like this like partnering with Vetfolio where we say hey here it is. Everybody can have access to it, and then we’re gonna do it asynchronously and we’ll say hey guys by this day everybody should have watched, part one of this, four part series.
And then we’re just going to have a quick huddle at lunchtime. Thirty minutes. We’re just going to talk about it real quick. I’m going to ask you guys some questions. What do you think about this? How would you handle these things? And just have some discussion. And now you’re getting, they’re getting the knowledge.
And then you just take a little bit of time in your practice to have a small group. Maybe it’s just half the CSRs get together. And we just, answer some questions. We give examples in the certificate of what conflict looks like. And sort of say, well, what would you do with this?
And, how does this look? And from an efficiency standpoint, it’s been a really successful way to sort of support practices.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: I love that you use the word efficiency, because I was going to say, also check out the Leadership Essentials Certificate on how to run efficient meetings, because talking about it in 30 minutes is also a skill.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes, it is. Oh, it totally is. Yeah.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Thinking of conflict management, I’ve certainly experienced conflict in practice and, reading the article that you put together, Andy that we’ve talked about a little bit here as far as, conflict being so normalized and good conflict management skills being invisible.
I really hadn’t thought about it from that perspective because I think it is very easy to look at no conflict as. It’s no conflict and that’s, and that’s not what we’re going for. And I think, I think both of you are doing a really good job of illustrating that conflict is how we grow. It’s essential and it’s, part of having a healthy team and how important it is to be able to navigate that together.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. so let me sort of paint a picture of kind of what it looks like. And because I think when we started putting this course together, there was a couple of raised eyebrows, I think from Vetfolio of like, what is this exactly?
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: No, our team has no conflict. What are you talking about?
Dr. Andy Roark: But it was like, but it was like this. And so there’s these things. So here’s what high performing practices look like. First of all, when you come in everybody, there’s a culture of positivity, right? Meaning that you have been given positive feedback again and again about the things that you do well.
So if you and I bump heads, it’s not the only thing that you’re hearing today is you’re working and working, nobody’s saying anything, and nobody’s saying anything, and I say to you, Hey, Dr. Cassie, you really should have put that mast cell dog on Benadryl. What happened? That’s the only thing anyone said to you all day, and you’re busting your butt.
That feels terrible. What about if, you know, you come in and all day long, it’s, Hey, thanks for doing that. And you know, I really appreciate that, hey, could you help me with this? you know, one of the things I really like about working with you is blank. And again, I’m compressing it all down to it one day, but just imagine that that’s the culture.
And you hear two or three positive things or positive pieces of feedback every day. Then imagine that you and I are friends. We talk about our weekends, we know each other. I know your family, you know mine, we know each other as people. And so layer that on top.
And then imagine that I say something to you that is, that’s hey want to make sure that you were intentional in your choice not to put this dog on Benadryl. Is that really what you want to do? And that’s how I would say it. It would not be, I can’t believe you didn’t, you didn’t do it.
You know, but again, but when you, when you, and you can see how it stacks, right? When we talk about conflict management, people are like, Alright, there we are, and we’re in the argument, and she says this, and what do I say? And I’m like, the fact that we’ve gotten to this point is already, like, we have failed multiple checks.
And that’s why I say it’s invisible, is because if you set the culture up the right way, and we get into this about building a positive culture, we get into this about showing appreciation, and you’re like, Why are you talking about showing appreciation in conflict management? I was like, because if you show appreciation along and along and along, it’s just not that big a deal when you don’t agree on something.
Like everybody feels safe and seen. It’s just not a big deal. It’s just, Andy’s giving me a hard time about this one thing and that’s it. But that’s that’s the beauty of it. That’s when it’s really done well.
Stephanie Goss: It gives you a lens to filter the experience through, and I think from a human perspective, that’s really important, right?
If if Andy and I are working together, and I, to his point, know him as a human, or Cassie, we’re on the floor and I know you, and you say something, and it come my brain filters it as Oh, she was really snappy in the way she said that to me. I now have a lens to not only filter that and think about, is this a me problem?
Am I having a bad day? And did it really come across as snappy? But I also have the ability to say, Cassie’s not normally so snippy with me. Maybe there’s something going on for her. And instead of being like, Hey, how come you just talk to me that way? I can say, Hey, are you? Are you okay? Are you having a bad day?
Cause I felt like you were really short earlier and that’s not like you. How are things going for you? It gives us that lens to be able to filter it through on a human level. And so to Andy’s point, we wind up. Avoiding a lot of the conflict, not because it isn’t needed, but because it’s just not there.
Because we can filter it, and we can look at each other and say, Hey, I know you as a person, you know me as a person. I now have context to those everyday annoyances that happen a million times a day, especially in a high pressure vet hospital where we’re all moving, and nobody stops to take a bathroom break all day.
That is the ability to just let it go and let it roll off our shoulders. And that’s the resilience that’s the resiliency factor. And I think that was, was so fun about diving into the content, whether it’s yesterday or in the certificate is how do we help teach our teams to be able to have more better days, and that, for me as leader, that’s what it’s really about.
So it’s been really fun to do.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: I love that you’re framing it in terms of a culture. I mean, both of you and this is a. Daily, bank that we’re making deposits into and creating a positive culture because I can sniff out a compliment sandwich. I know what you’re doing.
Stephanie Goss: Everyone can. Everyone can.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, exactly. It’s not about, I’m going to say something nice and then I’m going to say the thing, the mean thing, you know, it’s like, no. I mean, you know, one of my favorite sayings, and we talk about this on the, on our podcast together all the time. And basically in every lecture I give, this comes out because it’s such a core piece of my.
philosophy of just leading a team and working with people is, I truly believe that people are simple animals, right? And I don’t care how many degrees you have, but you’re a simple animal. And guys, we’re vet professionals. We know how to train simple animals. Most of us are not doing negative reinforcement training.
We’re not smacking dogs, thank God, on the rear, for making mistakes. We don’t, that’s not what we’re doing. We’re, most of us, and I’d like to see all of us, most of us are really heavy into positive reinforcement training. The way that we change behaviors is we celebrate and reward the behaviors that we want to see.
That’s how you train people. That’s how you train the doctors and the specialists. It’s all the same. And so the best way for conflict management is to build a culture of positive reinforcement where we tell people they’re doing a great job and we celebrate them and we celebrate the behaviors that we want to see.
And then when people have healthy conflict we celebrate that and say, Hey. You know, you and I were coming from different places and I felt really good about, about how we worked through this. Thanks for talking through it with me. And like, you can just, you can normalize that and you can build that, but it’s it’s so much better than people think it’s going to be.
I think, I think people, when I say conflict management, they imagine sweaty palms, face to face. And I go, most of what we’re going to teach you, we will give you those skills. There are ways to handle this. We can talk, we do talk in the certificate about when things escalate, and, and stuff like that.
However Most of the work is actually good, fun, fulfilling work of building relationships, building team bonds, building that positive culture, so that everybody feels okay when we do buttheads. It’s just not that big a deal. And it’s I don’t know. I just think that’s the thing that most people have missed.
And I love calling it out, but it’s funny. I had people come up to us after the lecture yesterday and the thing that bit the most of me was I had a sort of a group of people and they came together and they said you changed my whole philosophy like I just, I’m looking at this entirely differently now.
I think if you were at the very beginning we were talking about do you think conflict is bad and then we talk about, that’s it. Even that by itself, that’s an example. I think that so much of this is not, you don’t have to get better at winning shouting matches for goodness sakes.
Stephanie Goss: Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: There’s just another way to look at it and if you look at it that way, I promise you’re just going to be happier and anyway, especially if you can get the team to kind of look at it together that way.
So we’re all looking at the same thing.
Stephanie Goss: And I’m so excited because it’s funny you know, Cassie, your team and NAVC and doing this certificate. When I joined Andy’s team eight years ago, we started talking about the kind of CE that I wanted to see in the world. And this, the, having this kind of CE out there was something that was a dream of mine.
And I told Andy, I was like, I want to do something for the team that is going to give them communication tools that are going to change their life. And so being able to look at things like Leadership Essentials and the Conflict Management Certificate has been, it was a game changer for me in practice.
To Andy’s point of just flipping the script and giving, giving me a different way of looking at it and I’m super excited to be able to, one person, one group, one practice at a time, start to change that narrative. I think it’s healthy for all of us in veterinary medicine. I think it’s something that’s really needed.
And so it’s been really exciting to be able to have a partner in, in you all in the Vet folio team who believes in. How do we just give them the tools instead of looking at it from the leadership perspective of I don’t need to just equip the leaders because if I do, I’m creating the Karpman Drama Triangle and I’m just creating another hero.
How do I teach them to be their own heroes?
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Yes. And we love you guys too. We’re so, so happy that we’re doing this together. Another thing that, I kind of heard listening to both of you is we’re talking about we’re simple animals and I will raise my hand.
I fall into that category. But Stephanie, the example that you gave where you say, you know, oh, Cassie’s not usually like snippy with me on the fly, unless I’m hungry. Like I have a reputation there.
Stephanie Goss: Hungry’s a real thing.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Yeah, but if, I’m picturing that interaction. And then if we were to have that conversation, you said, you know, Hey, is everything okay?
I’m sorry. I was hungry. I really needed a sandwich and I shouldn’t have snapped at you. The dopamine from solving that, like, that’s positive reinforcement in and of itself, so it’s almost like this self perpetuating cycle of once you become better at solving conflict, at managing conflict you, it just kind of continues to reinforce itself.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s totally true.
Stephanie Goss: Yeah. And it’s that positive, it’s that positive culture shift. And so, like I said the practices that have really strong conflict skills within all members of their teams are the high performing, usually the high performing practices where you walk in and to Andy’s point, it’s all the invisible dancing.
It’s the happiness. It’s the, Hey, we really love being here and you can feel it, you can see it and you can experience it. And so being able to. Being able to grow that from within a single practice, I think is, huge and it’s exciting.
Dr. Cassandra Fleming: Conflict Management Certificate, Leadership Essentials Certificate, in our new reality show about bad dancing and well adjusted conflict management. Guys, thank you so much
Dr. Andy Roark: That’s what we got guys. Thanks to, , Dr. Cassie for having us on her podcast and being such a wonderful interviewer. Thanks to Stephanie Goss for being there as well. And thanks to you for listening, gang. I hope this was interesting and enjoyable. Check out our conflict management certificate on VetFolio.
You get it for free if you are an Uncharted Member. Uncharted as the company that I own and run with Stephanie Goss , as my co-host on the podcast. I hope it’s helpful. We’ll put some links in the show notes. You guys take care of yourselves.
